1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to transmission efficiency in a communications network. More specifically, the present invention relates to improving device latency in a wireless communications network.
2. Background Art
FLO is a technology designed primarily for the efficient and economical distribution of the same multimedia content to millions of wireless subscribers simultaneously. The goal of FLO technology is to reduce costs associated with delivering such content and allow users to surf channels of content on the mobile handsets typically used for traditional cellular voice and data services. This multimedia content is also known as services. A service is an aggregation of one or more independent data components. Each independent data component of a service is called a flow.
Services are classified into two types based on their coverage: Wide-area services and Local-area services. A Local-area service is multicast for reception within a metropolitan area. By contrast, Wide-area services are multicast in one or more metropolitan areas.
FLO services are carried over one or more logical channels, known as MediaFLO™ Logical Channels or MLCs. An MLC may be divided into a maximum of three logical sub-channels. These logical sub-channels are called streams. Each flow is carried in a single stream.
In order to properly operate a device in a Wide-area services or a Local-area service based network, the device must acquire current control information broadcasts from the network. For various reasons, it is difficult for the device to reliably execute all of its operations before acquiring accurate control information. Because of this unreliability, the latency of some of the device's operations may be proportionately increased by the time it takes the device to acquire the most up-to-date and current control information.
What is needed, therefore, is a method and system to improve the latency of device execution of operations that are dependent on having the most current and up-to-date control information.